There are gifts, and there are gifts. You’d think the image of Robert bounding proudly into the living room bearing a “Triplets of Belleville” DVD and saying “Happy Father’s Day, Daddy!” would be a real heart-melter. And it was. But my heartstrings got an even more intense workout four mornings later.

It was a familiar scene as I staggered from the bedroom and found my wife on the couch and Robert on his little plastic throne. “I’m pooping!” he said. Sure you are, I thought. Robert pees in the toilet pretty regularly, but as far as No. 2 is concerned, he’s more about nailing the performance than actually putting the biscuit in the basket. One of his favorite pastimes is announcing his biological need, scrambling onto his toilet seat, letting loose a few grunts and grimaces, and scampering off with an empty bowl in his wake. End scene.

Imagine, then, my delight when he rose to his feet and revealed the genuine article, which filled my heart with song and reeked like a bitch. Huzzah and kudos, my boy. This was the first day of the rest of our poop-free lives.

As long as we’re on the subject, I have two questions. First, Robert’s potty seat came with a little codpiece attachment that presumably keeps boys from spraying the drapes. I can see why this might be useful, but I haven’t yet figured out why it has an array of hard, plastic nubbins on the inside that form a small iron maiden for his mini-manhood. Is this some sick sort of aversion therapy? “Pee downward or you’ll abrade your package”?

Second, why must every potty seat be plastered with trademarked cartoon faces? Is it supposed to ramp up your child’s motivation? I don’t see it. Seems to me, you'd be more inspired to put your fanny on someone’s face if you held him in the worst contempt. But that’s just me.

On the way to take our kids swimming near Battery Park, blogger emeritus Brian and I stopped by for a look at the World Trade Center site, which neither of us had seen since the towers were destroyed. The unnatural openness gave me the shudders, and I envied Robert’s unfettered perspective. To him, 9/11 is just that strange day in utero when Mama’s adrenaline spiked, and Ground Zero is merely the ultimate kick-ass agglomeration of tricked-out construction vehicles.

While we viewed the site from the Winter Garden Theater, I snapped several shots like this one so I can show Robert that he lived here during a particularly interesting point in the city’s history, when what will arguably be the most famous structure on the planet was only a vast furnished basement and a few viewing stands.

As if on cue, Robert turned to face us, pointed across the highway, and exclaimed, “That’s New York! That’s where I live!”

If your toddler swims in the pool while wearing a standard disposable diaper, after about five minutes the diaper’s core of super-strong desiccant will most resemble which of the following?

(A) a bologna loaf
(B) a two-foot section of anaconda
(C) an irresponsibly large sex toy
(D) Star Jones’s forearm
(E) a weapon with which you could easily bludgeon a grown man to death and not leave any marks, thus confounding the authorities.

Why is today so stupendously great? Because my wife and child are slogging through the 99.9% humidity, and I’m at my climate-controlled, toy-strewn workspace. And since the project I’m working on requires the absolute minimum of concentration, I’m watching the U.S. Open and cranking up all of my wife’s least-favorite CDs.

This ... is the life.

This morning, Robert and I went off on one of our goofy riffs, which admittedly might not be all that amusing if you’re not us. The subject was Robert’s regularity. See, Robert’s BMs (going by Mr. Rogers’s delicate terminology) observe a refreshingly steady schedule: once a day, sure as sunrise. Except those days when the sun doesn’t rise, and my wife and I take note of the forbidding storm clouds on the horizon:

Me: Is there Poupon on my watch?
Robert: Poop-on poop!
Me: “Pardon me. Is there any Poupon poop on my watch?”
Robert: Poupon poop on my poop-on!
Me: I think we have a coupon for Poupon poop...
Robert: Poop-on soup!
Me: What will we put our coupon for Poupon soup on?

I have nothing against the idea of Crayola’s Mess-Free Color WonderTM system. Frankly, it’s a brilliant concept: Toddlers can draw indiscriminately on whatever surface they can reach, but nothing happens unless the chemicals in the marker hit different chemicals in the paper. A perfect diversion for long journeys, especially in a vehicle you don’t own.

For one of these trips, we sprang for a “Deluxe Set”—six markers, a pad of blank paper, and a “Color & Activity Book”—because [said in your best Telly Savalas accent] nothin’ but the best for your kids, right baby? So Robert’s working away on the C&A book when he exclaims, “Daddy? This is broken!” Sure enough, he’s doodling on the side of the page, and nothing’s happening. Turns out that the book is full of black-and-white drawings just begging to be colored, but the chemicals don’t let you color outside the lines.

And it gets worse. There is one page, for example, with six empty seed packets that asks, “What seeds are you planting this year?” Great, you think. My child is being asked to think for himself (and if Robert had his way, he’d grow nothing but goats and heavy machinery). But any decision is ultimately thwarted, because the chemicals have pre-ordained what the picture will be. Want to draw a banana? Well up yours, kid. It’s a tulip. Wanna try again? Ha! It’s peas! You vill draw vhat ve tell you, and you vill like it!

I’m onto you, Messrs. Binney & Smith, if those are your real names. I’ll have you know that we often strip Robert down to his skivvies, hand him some fabric markers, and encourage him to deface your little slice of fascism. And he does so with gusto, often burbling maniacally: I have seen your piss-ant attempt at mind control, and I rebuke you!